Today, Bookpleasures.com
is honored to have as our guest, author, playwright and screenwriter
Ken LaZebnik. Ken's work has been produced at theaters across
America, and whose film and TV scripts have ranged from
collaborations with Garrison Keillor and Robert Altman, to the
popular CBS series Touched by An Angel.

Ken has recently published his first book, Hollywood Digs.

Norm:

Good day Ken and thanks
for participating in our interview.

How did you get started in
writing? What keeps you going?

Ken:

Writing is the
family trade: My father, Jack LaZebnik, was a writer who taught
English and creative writing at Stephens College, in Columbia,
Missouri. I grew up watching the theatre program there produce
his plays, and have simply always written something or other.
All of my brothers and sisters are writers, too (my brother Philip is
best known for being one of the writers on several big animated
features, such as MULAN, PRINCE OF EGYPT, and POCAHONTAS; my sister
Cindy writes for a women's publication in Israel; and my brother Rob,
the most successful of all of us, has written for a ton of half-hour
comedy programs, created his own show, and the past several years has
been writing for THE SIMPSONS). What keeps me going is the fear
of failure and bankruptcy.

Norm:

From reading your bio, I
notice you are an author, playwright and screenwriter. Which do you
prefer and how do they differ from one another?

Ken:

I can't say I
have a favorite mode; they all have their different joys. If I
had to choose one, I suppose I would say writing plays. There
is really nothing to compare with the fun of sitting with actors and
a director and seeing your play come to life, and then the wonderful
(one hopes) experience of opening the show and feeling the immediate
reaction of an audience.

Screenwriting and TV writing is fun
occasionally; there are a lot of frustrations en route to getting
something shot, but when a production is actually before the camera,
there is a great sense of accomplishment and a kind of miraculous
feeling that your script brought all of these people together.
And since HOLLYWOOD DIGS is my first book, I don't have a large
sample size to draw from for comparison, but I will say that working
with publisher Bart Schneider has been an absolute joy.

Norm:

How did you decide you
were ready to write Hollywood Digs?

Ken:

Bart Schneider
(the publisher) told me I was ready and convinced me that I could do
this. I had written an essay for his magazine SPEAKEASY about
ten years ago. It chronicled F. Scott Fitzgerald's penultimate
residence (he lived in the cottage of Edward Everett Horton's Encino
estate). Bart had recently started Kelly's Cove Press and told
me if I just wrote another ten essays like that one, I'd have a
book. I have always been fascinated with Hollywood history, and
so I thought it would be great fun. It was, although it took
longer than I thought.

Norm:

How did you decide on the
title?

Ken:

The title was
the subject of much discussion. Eventually we settled upon
HOLLYWOOD DIGS: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SHADOWS because each essay was
prompted, more or less, by a shard of evidence from Hollywood history
which I had stumbled upon. Hopefully it evokes a sense of
digging into the past and unearthing little nuggets of history.

Norm:

Could you briefly tell our
readers what Hollywood Digs is about?

Ken:

It's a series
of essays about odd corners of Hollywood history: For instance,
the tale of stuntman and cowboy actor Jock Mahoney, who was the 13th
Tarzan, and the step-father of Sally Field. He was a superb
athlete whose career was destroyed when he leapt from an airplane
during the shooting of a Tarzan film, into a reservoir in Thailand
which no one realized was infected with human fecal matter. He
got dengue fever, lost 40 pounds, and his career (linked to his
physique) was down the toilet. Or an essay on Gidget -- who is
a real person, alive, well, and Jewish. Or an essay on my
personal experience writing the film based on the childhood of Thomas
Kinkade, the "Painter of Light," whose life ended in
tragedy a few years later. That sort of thing.

Norm:

As an author, what do you
want your work to do? Amuse people? Provoke thinking?

Ken:

In the case of
HOLLYWOOD DIGS, I suppose I hope to both amuse and provoke some
thinking about the role of the writer in Hollywood. Many of the
essays are about writers, such as Mel Shavelson. Shavelson was
a huge figure in his lifetime -- President of the Writers Guild,
leading Hollywood writer and director -- and yet today outside of the
industry, no one knows him. The urge to write is typically
connected to a desire to have something live beyond you; yet the
Hollywood writer's experience is that even if a film or TV show lives
beyond you, almost no one associates it with the writer. (As
opposed to the stars or even the director.)

Norm:

Did you learn anything
from writing your book and what was it?

Ken:

Well, first of
all, I learned to keep notes on my sources as I wrote! I am
used to making things up (in playwriting or TV writing) and didn't
realize that I would be called upon to provide a Notes and Sources at
the back of the book. It was incredibly difficult to work
backwards and track down my sources. Obviously, I'm not a
trained historian.

Norm:

What's the most difficult
thing for you about being a writer?

Ken:

I suppose, as
many writers feel, it's the sense that my work is never good enough.
I should have gone to graduate school; I should have finally learned
grammar (I always relied on my father for grammar advice and once he
passed away, I was in big trouble); I should have taken some
class on Shelley and Byron in college because I've never really read
them and should have -- along with a thousand other things…
There's that sense of inadequacy, and then on a very pragmatic level,
a difficult thing for me is simply staying concentrated.
Procrastination is at the heart of the writing experience, and I am a
sucker for distractions.

Norm:

How has your
environment/upbringing colored your writing? As a follow up, do you
have a specific writing style?

Ken:

I grew up in
the Midwest, but came of age doing experimental theater in New York.
I think those two influences pointed me in a direction of trying to
be emotionally honest, but enjoying experimenting with form (at least
in the theater). If I have a writing style, I guess it might be
dialogue heavy (at least for TV and film), which is residue from the
theatre.

Norm:

Is there anything you find
particularly challenging in your writing?

Ken:

My father's
basic dictum was "show, don't tell," which seems like
pretty good advice. That is much harder to do than it sounds.
I tend to enjoy "telling," or having characters who do and
it's something I have to watch carefully.

Norm:

What do you think of the
new Internet market for writers?

Ken:

From the
Hollywood perspective, it is the most exciting revolution in our
lifetimes. The tools of production, as Marx said, are now in
the hands of the workers. For the first hundred years of film,
the cost of film -- the simple cost of nitrate, and cameras and
post-production and distribution -- made a writer at the mercy of the
studio. Now, with digital cameras and laptop editing and online
distribution, virtually anyone can make a movie and upload it to
YouTube. This is, of course, a blessing and a curse.
There is an ocean of content which makes it difficult to cut
through. All that said, the Internet market is a great new
horizon.

Norm:

Do you feel that writers,
regardless of genre owe something to readers, if not, why not, if so,
why and what would that be?

Ken:

Yes,
absolutely, and I suppose this comes from my background in the
theater. As Tennessee Williams said, the one thing a writer
cannot do is bore an audience. Without an audience (readers) we
are nothing. The whole point of writing is that one has
something compelling to say; something that is worth all the
difficulties to bring it before a reader, and so we owe them our
finest effort to bring them into the waking dream that is our film or
book.

Norm:

What would you like to say
to writers who are reading this interview and wondering if they can
keep creating, if they are good enough, if their voices and visions
matter enough to share?

Ken:

The best I can
offer is to paraphrase Martha Graham, who wrote to Agnes DeMille when
she was despairing about the quality of her work and if she could
continue. Graham said, in effect, that no artist is ever
satisfied. There is only a sort of divine dissatisfaction that
keeps pricking us onward. There is only one of you in all of
eternity; no one else will ever contain your personal history, your
emotional life, your intellectual interests, and if you do not do
your work as an artist to express the unique experience that is your
soul, it will be gone forever. So do your work.

I am the
Founding Director of a program which we hope to get off the ground
this year, pending accreditation: The Stephens College
Low-Residency MFA in TV and Screenwriting. It is a program
based in a satellite campus in Los Angeles. Students will come
for ten days in the summer and ten days in the winter to experience
intensive workshops with working professional TV and film writers.
The rest of the semester, they will work online, one-on-one with
writer/mentors. The goal of the program is to increase the
number of women writing for TV and film. I have enlisted a
spectacular group of women writers who will be teachers and mentors
and I think it has a chance to make a real impact.

Norm:

As this interview draws to
a close what one question would you have liked me to ask you? Please
share your answer.

Ken:

How do you
think the St. Louis Cardinals will do this year? Answer:
They came close to a World Series victory last year; this year they
have a deeper bench, more experienced starting pitching, and will go
all the way.